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The designs the women painted on her skin left warm lines of yellow, scarlet and purple crisscrossing her stomach. Dani had expected it to feel cool, but hot water had been necessary to dissolve the pollens and crushed petals and dried fruits they use to make the pigment, so the dyes were still warm. Ulna, or perhaps it had been Ursa, had explained the pigments would wear off after a week or so.
Pillows beneath her upper back and head let her watch the swirls and straight lines appear, drawn by the confident fingertips of so many smiling women.
Pelle’s hands on her shoulders were warm, too, but they always were. He leaned over to look down at her and smile in his familiar, reassuring way. “Beautiful,” he said, another reassurance she’d grown used to but loved anew every time he said it.
She wasn’t quite four months along, her belly only recently taking on the unmistakable curve of pregnancy. Now that she showed, Pelle explained they’d do this blessing ceremony every month until she gave birth. It blessed next year’s crops as well as the child.
Pelle had known she was with child immediately, before Dani did, and had excitedly told people. She’d been worried it was bad luck to tell people about a pregnancy that early. But Pelle had known everything would be fine, and so far it had been.
The Hårga performed blessing ceremonies for every pregnancy, but a May Queen, pregnant in the same year she was crowned, prompted special celebrations.
She wore a white skirt that rode underneath her belly and a white top that only covered her breasts, her decorated midsection an explosion of colors between all that white. The same pigments used on her stomach swirled over the snow to make a path for her and Pelle to walk—him bundled warmly, her barefoot. The farther she went, the bigger the blessings. If she could make the entire walk, the blessings that would be bestowed on the Hårga next year would be more than they'd seen in over a century. Pelle was there to carry her if the cold became too much.
She carefully touched her stomach and, finding the colors dry, stroked her palm over the curve of her unborn child. "We'll make it together, won't we?" she whispered to it. Pelle's hand covered hers, and the warmth that flooded into her would carry her over snow and ice no matter how far they had to go. She wouldn't let any of her new family down today.
Pelle's smile when he scooped her up at the end of the trail was worth the burning skin of her soles, and the cheering and dancing that greeted her once he'd carried her back to the barn made it easier to bear still. Warm water waited for her stinging feet, and thick blankets were wrapped around her before she sat. She laughed as she watched the revelry, Pelle never leaving her side. Once she was warm, the blankets were taken away and people filed past her, each one lightly touching her exposed belly. One older man with a gap-toothed grin, his name might have been Nils, she thought—she had so much trouble remembering names now—dropped to his knees with a sob and pressed a single dry kiss her belly. Dani tensed, her natural urge being to pull away. Pelle’s warm hand rested on her shoulder in reassurance.
She relaxed and patted the man’s head with a smile.
She accepted everything without much resistance these days. Pelle. Pregnancy. A life to be spent here with the Hårga, unquestioning and, for probably the first time in her life, unafraid.
There had been no discussion between her and Pelle about their relationship, each other's boundaries, who got which side of the bed. Pelle had taken her hand after the fire ceremony, and that had been that. Even now he could be in another room or miles away, and Dani felt as if he still had never let go of her hand.
They hadn’t discussed birth control or even whether they wanted children or not. She’d only brought her current pack of pills to Sweden, and by the last day of the ceremonies, she’d stopped taking them without the kind of internal wrestling she was used to about every decision big and small. It had been so easy to let go and reject such an intrusion, such artifice in this natural world that had embraced her. She'd told Pelle she was going to stop taking them, of course, and he'd stroked his fingertips over her cheek and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, then kissed her with a whispered, "I know."
After everyone filed past Dani and touched her bare stomach, some filtered out to head for home while others held hands and danced in circles. But Pelle leaned down and said, "Let's go home?"
All the Hårga lived in the same area, a compound on the outskirts of the nearest town with a temple, a barn, several outbuildings and sheds in the center, sort of what she thought large hippie communes must have been like in the seventies. It wasn't long before they were home and Pelle lay her in their bed. He lay his hand on top of her stomach and gazed at her with so much love she nearly burst into tears. “What?” she’d finally said with a broken laugh when self-consciousness got to her.
“You’re glowing.”
“I’m painted.” She put her hand over his and tried to brush off his compliment. “I think it’s an illusion.”
Pelle shook his head and gently caressed her stomach. “You’re so beautiful, Dani.”
Her eyes did well up then, because every time Pelle said it, she believed it a little bit more.
If Dani had become pregnant when she was with Christian, he’d have punished her with inattentiveness and made her feel like she’d slighted him somehow. Not that she’d have allowed it to happen anyway. This kind of adoring love and attention wasn't even something she dared dream of when she'd been with him. Her wildest fantasies were of just a little more attention, a little more devotion. What had she been thinking?
She thought of him less and less often these days. At first, she'd sometimes snapped awake from a nightmare vision of a bear with his face, roaring and charging her, its back on fire. Sometimes she’d see him disemboweled, trying to say her name, accusing and angry, and she’d wake smelling old blood.
But Pelle’s hands were there to soothe her and help her back to sleep, and soon Christian seemed more like a memory from a dream than someone she’d spent four years of her life with. Her whole life before felt more and more dreamlike. Even her sister, her parents. She still mourned them, sometimes waking from a dream about them in tears, but other times she wondered if her whole life had been a dream she’d only woken from when she arrived here.
Pelle pulled the skirt down her legs and lowered himself between her thighs. “My gorgeous May Queen,” he whispered.
His lips pressed against her, and his hand stroked her stomach, sometimes tracing the lines of the runes, vines and flowers that had been painted there. His thumb pressed gently into her navel as his tongue pressed deeper inside her. Dani sighed and arched her back, offering herself to Pelle’s mouth.
No one had ever made her feel this way. Christian had used his mouth on her from time to time, but always as a means to an end, getting her ready so he could fuck her. It had never been a thing done for its own sake. Pelle took his time, took the same care with giving her pleasure as he had with everything else. Gave her feelings and her body a level of concern she’d never known from another living being.
His tongue flicked against her, pushing her closer, then his thumb pressed there as if to tell her to be still, to wait.
"Dani," he breathed. He rubbed his cheeks against her stomach, kissed it, let his tongue glide along the yellow and scarlet lines. He circled her belly button before he dragged wet lips down her body to suck against her and make her cry out his name.
She’d forgotten Christian’s name once. She’d woken from a nightmare to the soft cage of Pelle’s arms and had forgotten for at least a few minutes, unable to put a name with the burning face that had chased her through her dream. The rest of the people they'd traveled with, she’d forgotten their names one at a time, and hadn’t tried to recall them. She didn't need their names anymore. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she thought that she could forget her own name if Pelle ever stopped whispering it to her.
Pelle’s hand stroked the slight mound of her stomach as he breathed hot against her, his soft moan vibrating up her spine.
“Pelle,” she whispered, and the draw of his mouth against her pulled his name from her again. Her body arched as she came against his tongue, a vision of blooming flowers and fire and Pelle’s smile pushing everything else from her mind.
He rested his cheek against her stomach until her breathing slowed. “You're giving me the world, Dani. You, little one, in there," he said against her skin. "You're the world."
She looked forward to the day when her body would open like flower petals unfurling beneath the sun to push out a new life, a new family. Their world. Pelle kissed her stomach, his lips tracing the runes that she didn’t yet fully understand.
“Pelle,” she whispered again and again, stroking his hair, and thought one name is enough.